[rafa_rocks123]

A while back my friend dropped his laptop,(HP compaq mini cq10-405dx), and it stopped working. I told him the hard drive must have gotten messed up so we went to the store and i helped him pick out a new one. Now the problem I have is that when I start up the laptop I get a black screen saying,"error loading operating system", and since it's a mini I made an external CD drive so I can try to put windows 7 on it but I get the same error message. I also made sure to check the BIOS to make the external CD Drive boot up first. I have no idea what to do now to get it to work.


I would really apreciate any help anybody can give me

[SUEOHIO]

the fact that it was dropped its very possible that more than the hard drive got damaged.does this computer use a full size hard drive or a compact one?and did you put in the correct one and in the correct way meaning does it take a SATA or IDE hard drive.all laptops are fragile but mini ones are even more so because of their size.every time ive had to buy hard drives i have to go to a computer place that sells them because anywhere else they have to be ordered and not just bought off the shelf.

[rafa_rocks123]

thank you for you're reply, i found a way to fix it though. i bought a SATA to USB cable and hooked up the hard drive to my laptop and pasted windows 7 files on it and when i put the hard drive back on the mini and turned it on it started installing.